Trump, Putin and Alien Enemies
Sidebar
The Washington Post
4.1 • 4.6K Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode, Libby Casey, Rhonda Colvin, James Hohmann, and immigration reporter Maria Sacchetti discuss the deportation of hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to a prison in El Salvador without due process under the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely invoked law from the 18th century.
In response to a court placing a restraining order on the deportations, the President called for the judge to be impeached, Trump and his allies' defiant tone against the judiciary drew the ire of Chief Justice John G. Roberts in a rare public rebuke.
Plus, reaction to President Donald Trump’s high-stakes call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as they negotiated the terms of a potential cease-fire in Ukraine.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Look what happened. Is this crazy? We stand on the verge of the four greatest years in the history. |
| 0:08.5 | Make America great a good victory. How can you be against them? |
| 0:17.2 | The Supreme Court's Chief Justice John Roberts has issued a rare public rebuke. |
| 0:22.6 | It came today after President Trump wrote on social media that a judge should be impeached because he didn't agree with him. |
| 0:29.1 | It's the latest punch in a fight that's getting more and more serious over the power of the presidency and the courts. |
| 0:35.4 | Welcome to Sidebar from the Washington Post. I'm Libby Casey. What's kicked |
| 0:39.3 | off this latest round is the Alien Enemies Act. Now, this is a law from the 1700s that |
| 0:45.3 | Donald Trump talked about on the campaign trail and promised to use this weekend he did it. He used it |
| 0:51.5 | to deport Venezuelans, allegedly gang members to a notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador. |
| 0:58.5 | Today, the group here at the Washington Post, our sidebar crew, we're going to talk about some huge questions this brings up. |
| 1:05.6 | I'm with Rhonda Colvin, senior political correspondent, James Holman, columnist, and editorial writer. |
| 1:14.4 | And joining us, Maria Cicetti, who covers immigration for the Post. |
| 1:20.7 | Some of the questions we're going to dive into today, who gets to make decisions, the president or a judge? |
| 1:24.7 | Should the Alien Enemies Act be used to deport gang members? |
| 1:25.5 | Is that legal? |
| 1:30.2 | And how do we even know if they are gang members? So let's start with this, Rhonda. The Illion Enemies Act, we heard Trump talk about it on the campaign trail, |
| 1:35.9 | but I remember people saying like, could he really do that? Would he really do that? What is this law? |
| 1:40.7 | Yeah, and I will add to that. Not only did he talk about it on the campaign trail, |
| 1:49.5 | it was actually in the Republicans platform, the party's national platform, a few days before the R&C, I looked it back up. There is a sentence in there saying that this specific act will be used |
| 1:54.7 | to deport individuals. But the history of this is, as you said, 1798, the federalists are in control of Congress, |
| 2:02.6 | and they feel that there is an imminent war brewing between the U.S. and France. |
| 2:07.2 | So they decide in order to protect the country from non-citizens living here who may start an |
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